The One Who Connects

I assume you mean this one, which does not say what you are implying. He says the Nightwatcher is on the same level as the Stormfather. He then says there is a level below the two of them, but far above normal Sentient Spren, and that middle level is where Cusicesh is at. And ninja's by CaptainRyan. Nice job.

Close quarters includes both parties being in very close proximity. If I were right in front of you, your elbow would bang into my shoulder on your downswing and you'd cut the air. Situations like that favor knives, because swords aren't the best grapple weapons. This is what I meant earlier about the valid tactic of being "too close" to someone with a sword. Just because you are in the great outdoors doesn't mean you can't be hemmed in. If I keep up my forward momentum and stick close to you(something a maniacal Mistborn like Kelsier or Zane would be good at), I can force you to constantly be backing up in order to have room to swing your sword, while never sacrificing the mobility of my knives. I don't even have to force you into a wall/corner. So long as you can't maneuver your sword to swing it, knives have the advantage. Shields can force someone back a foot or so, but that's why I mentioned ripping the shield away via pewter. Despite wielding melee weaponry, you really don't want to be in close quarters against a determined Mistborn. I was gonna mention how the macuahuitl was a sword-like object, so using the traditional toolbelt-loop to hook an axe into wouldn't work. However, there's nothing stopping you from designing the weapon with less teeth, so it's got more of a handle to it. So that's "sheathing" it, but I'm still not sure how safe that'd be, especially if you're concealing it within an secret pocket/sleeve. Modern Axes get blade covers for a reason. However, gunpowder was discovered(in real life at least) by accident. Alchemists trying to make a potion of immortality inadvertently made a bomb. Armor is a concept that already exists, so ideas would flow more naturally from it. I.. probably agree. I'm still of the opinion that there is a semi-rational reason why it wouldn't have caught on anyway, but nothing prevents TLR from quietly supporting that if he so chose. Not that different from modern companies buying reviews for their products, come to think of it. TLR can subtly provide some support to an esteemed thinker who's speaking out against armor for Metalborn, and the public will go along with it. Elend probably read about it in one of his books

A majority of Mistborn are Nobles, who have busy things to be doing the next morning, or criminals, who know the value of when to run vs when to hide. In most circumstances, if a Mistborn is pulling more than an all-nighter, something has gone very wrong. With the advent of Duralumin and the War against Ruin, they should start carrying more, but before that? Assassins are useful because they can get in, do their job, and get out without getting caught. But they are most useful when they can do that quickly. Vin and Zane tore through Cett's Tower in a matter of hours. Kelsier managed to kill every guard/noble in the area and get out with enough time for Lord Tresting's Estate to have burned to the ground before the sun came up. Elend and Crew vs the Koloss was all within one standard daytime segment, so 12-14 hours at most. Your definition of "a really long time" appears to be quite different from mine. A shield is just as bulky as a sword in close quarters. Knife still has the advantage if you are the combatant that's more skilled at maneuvering. Hrmm... not sure if we have any examples in the books, but a pewter-burner could probably grab onto the Hazekiller's dueling cane, preventing it from being used. Maybe that's why they work in groups... The shield isn't to keep enemies away, it's to keep projectiles at bay. A pewter-burner who gets close could easily rip the shield from their grasp. The deterrent from approaching is, and will always be, the weapon. Blows from a dueling cane hurt, a lot. Vin takes about 3 at once, and even with her own pewter to negate some of it, she's not having a good time. The general consensus in r/Worldbuilding is that ceramics for weaponry are rather breakable. As evidenced by the medieval Brigantine and the Aztec Macuahuitl, ceramics are best served in small pieces than one large item. Using a wooden core would help, but I'm still leaning towards the dueling cane being more useful, despite not having a cutting edge. That's personal opinion though, as I'd have to do more research to make a definitive answer. Although, if you use something with "teeth" like the Macuahuitl, rather than a proper blade, that's gonna be a pain to sheath/conceal safely. Tradeoffs.. Necessity is the mother of invention. Ingenuity is good at coming up with clever solutions to a problem, but if it's not seen as an issue that needs fixing? It's been 1,024 years. I(and probably you) refuse to believe that nobody said "hey, why don't we wear armor?" in all that time. There has to be a reason why armor for Mistings didn't catch on, but we can only speculate at this point. I can see Thugs and Mistborn forgoing armor, since they have pewter and/or Atium to protect them. Rioters/Soothers are manipulators, and Tineyes are scouts, rather than fighters, so they shouldn't be in a situation where they would need armor. Seekers are up in the air, but I'd lean more towards them not being fighters. Augurs(Gold) too. Lurchers have shields to block coins, so that might be an excuse, but a little armor wouldn't hurt. Coinshots can push away coins, so no need for a shield, but.. I'm not sure here. Smokers should be protected, since they are important to not getting caught. Maybe they don't wear armor so they don't stand out? I'd figure character names shouldn't be changed in a translation, but sure why not. Names in Italics. Kelsier - Mistborn. Vin - Mistborn. Sazed - Feruchemist. Breeze - Soother. Ham - Philosopher, Thug. Marsh - Kelsier's Brother, Seeker. Dockson - Skaa. Elend - Noble, Mistborn. Clubs - Carpenter, Smoker. Spook - Club's Nephew, Tineye. Allrianne - Cett's Daughter, Rioter. Zane - Elend's Half-Brother, Mistborn. Satisfactory?

It's cause they are already light. That said, each order did have an eye color associated with them. RAFO.

"H" is a wild card. "Th" is a separate letter, as are "Sh" and "Ch". So the one you gave is still not a palindrome, Vorin or otherwise.

Hazekillers. Wooden Shields, Wooden Dueling Cane. Normal soldiers do wear armor. Both Vin and Kelsier have used breastplates as launching anchors before. Those who are actually meant to go against Allomancers do not use metal. Leather armor is less protective than metal armor, so normal soldiers use standard metal. As for why Mistings don't use it... wearing armor would make a criminal stand out, and I'm sure wearing armor is against those Noble Sensibilities(IE: they choose not to). Hazekillers might need some practical rationale though. hrmm... maybe the mobility? Wooden armor? From what I'm seeing, both Laminar and Lamellar seem more time consuming to make than normal metal armor. Additionally, wood is rather flammable. I'm thinking this just didn't catch on, either because of the fire hazard, the effort involved, or(like with gunpowder) because TLR didn't want it to catch on. Stone armor.... To quote r/AskHistorians: "Metal is easier to manufacture with molds, lighter while still hard, and not as easy to shatter." Stone wouldn't catch on there for the same reason it didn't catch on here. On the magical side, stone armor is heavy. It'll do a number on a Mistborn's flight paths, strain the body of a non-pewter burner, and slow down the person using it. Mistborn can move pretty fast, and you need to be able to move/react fast in order to fight them. It's the reason body armor through the centuries weighs less and less with each new iteration. Stone Sword. As a non-pewter burner, the prior argument stands. It's the reason we've moved to ceramics and carbon fiber for things, so we can make larger items light enough to effectively wield. For a pewter-burner, it wouldn't be that different from a Koloss sword in function. However, both metal and wood are better materials to work with than stone. For wooden swords, we already have the dueling canes. Do remember that dueling canes are a sword equivalent, rather than an actual sword. Technically they would be categorized as "clubs," as they were an impact weapon that had no bladed edges. There's a double-edged sword(pun not intended) to that. Sure you could conceal a 2-3 foot sword, but can you easily draw that in a situation? A small dagger is much easier to draw from a hidden pocket/sleeve than a longer item would be, because they need much less room to maneuver it out. This is one of the reasons why getting "too close" to someone with a sword is a valid tactic, as a knife works better in confined spaces than swords do. For the same reason TLR wanted bows to be used instead of guns: Training. You don't need fancy training to thrust your arm forward or pull a trigger, but firing a bow takes a lot more learning(and physical strength training, so a pewter burner doesn't just snap the bow on the draw). Bows are also kinda problematic in close quarters. Zane and Allrianne? Allrianne doesn't strike me as the fighter, for the same reason Breeze isn't. Emotional Allomancy is a much more useful tool for them to use than a blade. For Zane, I'd blame it on his father. I don't think Straff offered him the opportunity to train with the bow. Even if he did, using a bow requires one to sit still(or have F-Zinc). Sitting still is not advised in an era of nighttime assassins. Lastly, knives are infinitely reusable, while arrows aren't. Same principle as putting a bayonet on a rifle, so you still have a weapon when you run out of ammo. As stated by Kingsdaughter613, you are mistakenly considering Mistborn as soldiers. They aren't. For the last thousand years, they've been assassins. The trappings of 1,000 yrs of tradition is hard to shake off. Assassins are all about practicality, and knives/daggers are practical for the situations they would normally be in, where the rest of that is not. Modern day assassins don't carry around rocket launchers now do they? Having a backup plan is a valid complaint, but they do have one. Mistborn can essentially fly away if things go wrong. The only times where they wouldn't do this is if they got caught before accomplishing their objective, which they actively try to avoid happening. And even if they did get caught, as shown by Kelsier vs Hazekillers in book 1, the vast majority of the opposition they would face has to be roused from their sleep and get to the area. The only time you would be forced to fight is if your objective is guarded, or if you got detected very early on, when it might just be better to leave and try some other time. See, carrying extra ammo is a conscious choice. Conscious choices are made for a reason. A Misting doesn't carry a few more hours worth of metal because they don't think they will need it when they head out. When they were going to the Kandra Caves, Elend and crew didn't expect to be fighting the better part of a quarter million Koloss, so they didn't bring the necessary metal to fight that many. During the siege of Fadrex City, Elend only had about 40,000 Koloss before Ruin took control of them, so I imagine they expected Ruin to have about 40,000, and geared up accordingly. As I mentioned before, Elend(and/or Vin) had some Obsidian Daggers in HoA. I will hold to my earlier supposition that the wonky tech advancements TLR allowed made glass a cheaper alternative to obsidian, for the.. less reputable fellows at the very least. As for stone, it's got the same principle in mind. Try sharpening a stone with ye olde tech and tell me how that works out. Glass and Obsidian(and metal) are all easier to work with than stone. Dueling canes were made of wood rather than stone because wood is lighter and more aerodynamic, allowing a much faster swing(more like a real sword). All that extra impact power is meaningless if you can't swing the thing fast enough to actually make contact. There's a balance to be struck there, and stone does not make the cut.

I've been theorizing(mostly because of Odium) that you could overcome this "connection issue" by being sufficiently Invested. Rayse doesn't seem the type to be connected to things like Honor or Devotion, but Brandon has always said that he "doesn't want to" pick up other Shards, not that he can't. I don't have any real evidence beyond the wording of that WoB and my intuition, but it's a little theory of mine.

From last year's SotS: This sounds like MB Era 3 will be after that. Out of curiosity, when was the "last time" he spoke about it? We'll know in a month. Additionally, his plans will have been shifted quite a bit now that he's pulled Apocalypse Guard from the release schedule.

There is an original, with two follow-ups. Make of them as you wish. Have this:

Ruin was mostly focused on influencing TLR, since TLR influenced everything else. Roshar is not so centralized, so Odium has to do more work. Ruin's lack of influence in other things isn't a sign of inability, it's a sign of picking and choosing. Maybe "involved" was the wrong word for me to use, but just because Odium is less able to influence things does not mean he could not influence things. And over the course of 5 or 6 millennia, he could pick and choose just about anything to influence. This WoB is from 2013, before WoR(and thus, Pre-Everstorm). As stated, Odium has been influencing many things, presumably for a long while. He also has the Unmade, which I would count as him influencing things(albeit indirectly). You're not the first to think that. The easy way to remember it is that Hemalurgy is of Ruin, while the Well is of Preservation. Preservation's power wouldn't know anything about Ruin's magic. Preservation himself.. maybe, but his power on it's own, no. Um.. maybe? I don't know about "created by the Shards," but I'm somewhat positive there are Spren that don't contain ambient Investiture from Adonalsium. Best I can find on Arcanum is this WoB, which is.. semi-relevant. It's that "free Investiture" that's throwing me off. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

I see the similarities as valid, but I don't think they are intentional. To quote The Worker of Secrets himself: Taravangian and Raidriar are similar characters because at their base, they have similar personalities. On a meta-level, similar personalities end up getting involved in similar situations. Deciding to do/say similar things, etc.. The specifics may vary, but the more you boil down aspects of a person's personality and disposition, the more patterns you start to note in their actions and behavior. There are probably a few real life examples that we could put in this list with Raidriar and Taravangian. Besides probably being the main reason we noticed the similarities, the fact that Brandon wrote both characters merely shows that he's good at writing characters like this. It doesn't have to be anything more than that.

At least the last post was still this year. By necro standards, that's pretty good. You can also edit your previous post to avoid double posting. (It's kinda frowned upon around here) Maybe? The placement of Warbreaker implied within this one should still be accurate, even if Alloy got moved around later because it could not happen in that timeframe. We do have a WoB saying that the Warbreaker Sequel is directly before Stormlight Archives though, so there's that.

Fabrials can duplicate both Surgebinding and Voidbinding, in addition to the various things we've seen them do. I don't think his expanding repertoire is a sign of anything other than ingenuity or a desire to experiment. Honor could probably do a number of fancy tricks if he wanted to, but it doesn't seem like the thing he'd do. Cultivation seems the type to "try something new and improved," but we don't have any examples yet. In the end, I think the main reason he's got all these fancy things when nobody else seems to is because Brandon decided to write them in first. For example, the Mistborn Series will discover magically powered FTL travel in the future, which isn't in the normal wheelhouse of the Metallic Arts, but they haven't yet because Brandon hasn't written it yet. AonDor is programming reality, where the possibilities are literally endless, but that's for the future. Eventually, something has to be for "the now," and this is what Brandon picked. Ruin is the one who showed TLR how to create Inquisitors, Koloss and Kandra. If he hadn't straight up told TLR how, they never would've come into existence. That's the reason why the Inquisitors made next to no headway with Hemalurgic experimenting for the 1,024 yrs that the Empire stood. So they were designed by Ruin. Ruin could easily have made new horrors with his magic, but why would he? He wanted to destroy the world itself. The people on it were of little consequence unless they got in his way. Additionally, he's got infiltrators(Kandra), heavy infantry(Koloss), and specialists/leaders(Inquisitors). Why create new monsters when the ones you already have work just fine? (This was also partly on Brandon, as adding entirely new stuff in book 3 of 10 is fine, but in the middle of book 3 of 3?) As for new uses, remember that his magic system steals things from others. He's limited by what's in his environment to steal. He did give several of the Inquisitors access to Feruchemy via spikes, so he expanded what was currently being done with his Investiture. But beyond that, there wasn't much else for him to take. Ruin still had Preservation blocking him. Reread Secret History, or the HoA chapters after Vin ascends. Ruin and Preservation can hardly do anything because the other is constantly blocking them. Cultivation does not appear to be doing this as directly as R&P did, and Honor isn't in a position to prevent it. So Odium is getting away with some things. Seons and Skaze are splinters in the same vein as Spren, but Roshar has so many Spren because that's how it was created. Adonalsium personally grew the planet, and much of that ambient Investiture of his that permeated it became Spren. Assuming they had a choice when they made Scadrial, R&P decided to do it differently. He's been involved in everything for a long time. He's just been exercising subtlety for the past 4,500 years, but now that the Desolation is here, he felt like it was time for him to return to center stage. For killing the other Shards, we have a WoB that he needs time to recover from that, and he's had at least 2 millennia since Honor kicked the bucket. I'll let him slide a little on this front. The vast amount of Spren isn't a big thing either(to me at least). There were a good number of Nahel Spren back in the old days too, so they appear to be able to occur without incurring too much of a power drain on the Shards. As for the rest, the Unmade are only 9 Individuals. It's probably a little more Investiture than Honor put into the Honorblades, but it's not some immeasurable amount. I don't have enough details about the Everstorm for me to speculate. Preservation physically ripped a portion of Ruin's power from him. What Preservation did is "kind-of" splintering, so that's gonna tax him quite a bit more than the mundane things we've seen Odium do. Additionally, Preservation "ruined" Ruin, which was against his Intent. We don't know what kind of effects acting against the Intent would have in the long run. Our only other example(Vin) died shortly after and didn't have to deal with the repercussions of it, so we still don't know. In terms of restrictions, there are a few. They can't touch The Beyond, there are the mysterious "rules they are bound by" that Honor mentioned, and a select few other things. But in general, the main restriction hitting the Shards is when another Shard is blocking them. Regarding TLR, it's a bit more than a "small amount". He held a substantial amount of power, but he only held it for a small amount of time. Bringing it back to R&P, they can choose to use their power to prevent the other from doing something. I'm fairly certain we see Ruin and Kelsier do just that in Secret History at one point. And in HoA, when Vin started changing things after ascending. Ruin stopped her third or fourth action because he chose to let the first two happen. You really think Honor would just let Odium crack the planet in two, or that Odium would let Honor just "sweep away" his armies? Vin had Preservation's eye from the start. Ruin would never have been able to destroy her via his own power, so he was forced to act through pawns to kill her the conventional way. The same is likely true on Roshar. The Parshendi summoning the Everstorm is a good example. Odium would've blocked any attempts by Cultivation to destroy the Parshendi, and Cultivation could've blocked any attempts by Odium to destroy Dalinar's armies.

Spool mistyped(or got hit by autocorrect). The prior sentence is saying they think it's from Yesteel, so it stands to reason that the sentence should read as: "From the Warbreaker annotations, Yesteel does know how to make them somehow,"

Gemhearts(or the Greatshells that have them) can hold investiture indefinitely too. That's their purpose from a story perspective. He got cloth actually, which he sold for food. But either way, that's a point of contention around here. It's a second-hand account of what happened, and a common interpretation is that something neurological happened that led to him getting the cloth, and basically this is a wait and see.

For the bottles, it's hygiene. You can probably wash a stone/wooden cup out so it'd be safe to drink from, but when you already have glass, you'd just keep with what works. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" in action. As for the weapons, Inquisitor Axes have Wooden handles and Obsidian Axeheads. Elend carries an Obsidian dagger or two in HoA. People do use them, but they just got used less. The Scadrian Tech Tree is.. a little wonky, so it might just be easier to make glass than to mine obsidian. Additionally(if memory serves), Obsidian blades are really brittle. A solid chunk of glass will still break if you drop it, but it's less likely to break doing other actions(like stabbing). It's a trade-off. For the purpose of stone/wood weaponry, glass is sharper.

We've seen several different Plate Colors from Dalinar's Visions. And they've all matched up with the "color" of each Order Glyph(and/or associated Gemstone). A thing to note is that the Shardplate itself isn't a different color. They're all still slate gray, but Radiant Plate has glowing glyphs on it that match the Order color.

You can't push a glass dagger. You can push on metal inside a glass vial. Flinging metal at glass generally breaks it, so the risk exists for the vials, but not the daggers. Additionally, the vial is around your waist(I believe), while a dagger would be in your hand. Pushing glass against someone's midsection is gonna be worse than pushing glass against your hand. Only one case in three books does not mean it never happened in the past 1,024 years. Someone could easily have pushed on a coin pouch or a metal vial by mistaking it for the other of the two. In a nighttime fight, that blue line isn't gonna tell you what's what. I wouldn't call it "unlikely" so much as less likely. Only Mistborn and Coinshots would be carrying coins by the way. Any of the other Mistings wouldn't have coin pouches to divide your attention. You forget that Ruin was fueling Marsh with Mist power too. He's leaking black smoke just as Elend was leaking white mist. Her using some of her power didn't put her at a disadvantage against Ruin because they were both lowered. But as King of Nowhere stated, that amount of power was inconsequential. Preservation was hesitant to do it before because it'd put Ruin further ahead in the long run, and Ruin wouldn't do it because he wanted to keep his advantage. However, you're forgetting that Preservation put more of his power into the whole of creation when they created Scadrial. It took millennia for that slight disadvantage to add up in Ruin's favor. In that singular moment, fueling one person's Allomancy for.. 10 minutes or so is less than nothing. Consider it like this. Each Shard has.. say 10,000 "power." Killing a Shard takes 5,000. When they attack, all that power is thrown at the other all at once. At that point, it wouldn't matter if you had 5,005 or if you had 8,000. As long as you had more than 5,000, they die. If Vin or Ruin had dropped below 5,000 beforehand, then the other would have lived. As demonstrated by what happened between Vin and Ruin, neither of them had crossed that threshold. Yes, Ruin had more power, but it didn't matter. Vin still had enough to kill him, so they died.

Do remember that the Prelude(Aharietiam) takes place 6,000 yrs after the Shattering. [2] 4,500 yrs later would be at the back end of a 10,000 yr timeline. This is what happens when entries are paraphrased. Regardless of the details, I still agree that the Desolations had to be hundreds of years apart at most. 6,000 yrs from the Shattering minus the time Odium spent killing Shards and doing other stuff would probably be about 3-4 millennia at most. It's from the Ars Arcanum in WoK and WoR. Nazh makes an offhand mention of "the ten levels of Voidbinding," but he didn't have any other solid info at the time. We know that the chart at the back of WoK is a Voidbinding Chart, and there are 10 "Surges" on it. It'd make sense for there to be 10 Voidbinding things either way, because they manipulate fundamental forces through the Surges. There are only 10 Surges, so anything manipulating them would follow that pattern of 10. He'd been tortured time and time again, went away and were dragged back for more, and now he finally has a chance to stay away. In his situation, you'd say the same as him: "I can't take any more. I can't go back." That's not implying anything magical, merely the sound of a broken man. Kelek recognizes that same brokenness in Jezrien's eyes shortly after during the prelude.

Maybe I'm subconsciously thinking Antarctica is bigger than it is because of that "1/7th land area," rather than remembering that 1/30 total area. Your logic makes sense, even if I feel it should be a little smaller than Antarctica. (In the end, close-ish is good enough for me) Yea, my powers of 10 were off there. Um.. well, if we bump up the primary 6 Ashmounts to a VEI 2, they'd produce 10^6 each. I've stated that Tyrian appears bigger on the map, so a low VEI 3 (10^7). 10^7 + 6(10^6) = 16,000,000 cubic meters. Given the 16 in that number, I'm almost convinced that's right. If we bumped up all the Ashmounts one VEI level, that 16 would (conveniently) still be there, but with another zero at the end. I'm hesitant to do that though, because stronger eruptions are more dangerous, and they happen less often. I suppose you could split the difference by having the outer 6 go off at different times, but still... Doing the math, we'd need bigger numbers, or a larger timeframe. Imagine if it took six months or so to cover the continent normally, that's let us get away with smaller individual ashfalls(albeit not much smaller). Ruin was free for nearly a year, and he hadn't entirely covered the continent by then, even with him making more eruptions. I'd say we reconsider how long it'd take to cover the continent and work backwards from there. We need to produce 10^12 over X amount of time, and go from there. Wasn't aware we had that info. Good to know. I'm having trouble reconciling the timing issues though, as the larger ashmount(Tyrian, by Luthadel) should theoretically go off less often, even though Luthadel gets ashfalls more often. Could be a strong magnetic pole pulling in some of the ash from the outer 6 ashmounts, which could also account for them getting them less often further out. Does that sound reasonable?

Depends on where Brandon decides to draw the line. We know Mistborn don't get Resonances because they have too many powers, which messes with the synergies between them. We know you get a Resonance with 2 powers, but that 16 powers is too many. However, it's up in the air for 3-15 powers, and that's a big gap. There's also the "chord argument" that Calderis brought up before: If Calderis is right, then the Resonance from all 10 Surges would not be the same as given by just two of them. Here's the thread that Argent mentioned:

Sazed mentions this in the HoA Epigraphs: From the Annotations: Would you consider Antarctica to be a "geographically small area of the planet's surface?" [This is an opinion question. I feel that TFE would be smaller than that, but the Map has no scale on it] Depends on the type of eruption. Bigger eruptions put out more(duh), but according to the Volcanic Explosivity Index(VEI), even a VEI 1 eruption puts out at least 10⁴ m³ of tephra(ash, lapilli, and volcanic blocks). 10 to the 4th power is 10,000. Assuming that the Ashmounts are all VEI 0 Eruptions so they aren't as dangerous to those nearby, they just have to put out less than 10,000 cubic meters of tephra per eruption. When you consider that there are 7 nearby Ashmounts on the map of the Final Empire, I think even those small numbers can start to add up. With the exception of Tyrian(which is rather close to Luthadel), the other 6 Ashmounts form a circle around the Central Dominance. This puts them in a prime position to spread throughout the other Dominances, while Tyrian(which also appears to be bigger than the others) can likely tackle the Central Dominance by himself. Additionally, the ash is ferromagnetic, which makes this even easier. From the same annotations link as above: Ash can spread across the globe, but I think having the magnetic pole so close would hem in that spread a little. I'd agree with Windrunner that the volcanoes are probably specialized to produce more than the usual quantity of ash, largely because TLR created these volcanoes from scratch. He'd have more creative freedom that way compared to altering existing ones, and whatever he did definitely worked.

I would swear there's a WoB that answers this but I can't find it anywhere, even with the new Arcanum. To the best of my memory though; Yes, the investiture just leaks out into the Spiritual Realm and eventually goes back to the Shard it came from. It's within Pagerunner's Reddit WoB Database(that I cannot view at present.. might just be my pc acting up, try the link yourself) But the line I absolutely remember from it(semi-verbatim): Brandon: What happens to someone's body when it's not being used by them? The system is meant to work like that. Edit: I found it in Arcanum(you won't be happy when you hear what I had to do to find it ) I searched for entries that contained the word "body" and did a ctrl+f search for the word "used." As it turns out, I remembered the line very well.

There was this one WoB, but I think we have cause for exception. The one gifting the breath to another uses their own color for the process. Endowment is the one providing breath. I think direct action by a Shard would be an exception to the rule.

I figure Divesting is about as easy as Investing is. In my opinion, the real "difficulty" for Odium would be time and effort. Time spent regathering his power is time Odium isn't spending on guard from Cultivation. Mental focus spent regathering his power is mental focus he isn't spending elsewhere to keep Cultivation(or the KR) on edge. To bring it back to Ruin and Preservation, power/effort expended doing one thing can't be expended blocking the other Shard from doing something else. Odium and Cultivation both need to be careful with their power so they don't give the other an advantage. One of his advantages against other Shards was that he had more power available to use since he wasn't invested anywhere. Due to this, I highly doubt he'd just rip himself away and leave power behind on Braize after finishing off Cultivation.